Heaven on Earth - Part 1 - Part B

There's only one person who can fix the earth. It's not any politician.

It's not any party. It's only the one who made it. And the one who made it and the one who will judge it is the one who will remake it and will live in it for a thousand years.

By the way, can I just add a PS to that? No matter what you're going through today, no matter what your life, what you're dealing with, God and God alone can reconstruct and heal you. He can fix that which is broken. Have you ever noticed that contestants in beauty pageants are expected to answer questions in the interview phase of the contest about how to achieve world peace? In reality, everyone wants world peace, but no one knows how to make it happen.

At least we know it takes more effort than just visualizing it, right? Well, today here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heidzik reveals the secret to making world peace a reality. But before we begin today, we want to tell you about this month's excellent resource. Who comes to mind when you think of great godly women? Probably Jesus' mother, Mary. Maybe Ruth, the unlikely ancestor of Christ.

But what about you? Here's New York Times bestselling author, Eric Metaxas. Clearly, if God created us male and female in His image, it's leaning into who we are as women, if we're women, that is going to show God's greatness. Discover how the lives of some of the greatest women in history can show you the path to true greatness in your own life as a woman made in God's image. That's what you'll find in this month's inspiring resource by Eric Metaxas.

In every one of the seven women, I think you see a different side of femininity. Seven Women is our thank you for your gift of $35 or more today to help connect more people to God's Word. And right now, we'll also send you a special bonus resource, Pastor Skip's six-message CD collection on prominent women from Scripture.

Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely or call 800-922-1888. Now, if you'll open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 20, we'll join Skip Heitzig as he continues with our study, Heaven on Earth. There is something called post-millennialism. Now, the terms, don't let them throw you.

It's pretty easy to figure it out. Post, after the millennium, they believe that Jesus Christ will come back after a period of time where we, God's people on the earth, Christianize the world and present the world to Jesus Christ, present the kingdom when he comes back after a period of time, not necessarily exactly a thousand years. It's the idea that we're going to spread the gospel, Christianize the world, and the world's going to get better and better and better and so good that everyone's a Christian, and we will then bring the kingdom and give it to Jesus. Now, this is a viewpoint that was popular in the 19th century and early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution, scientific advancements had given people the idea that, hey, we are bringing in utopia.

We're really doing this. Now, it's not very popular today. That whole idea fell off, and so the fair question is, well, whatever happened to post-millennialism?

Here's the answer. World War I happened to it. The Great Depression happened to it. World War II happened to it. The Nazi Holocaust happened to it. There was enough catastrophic events that caused people to go, oh, I guess the world isn't getting better and better, but rather worse and worse. Now, it's not completely gone away.

It has resurfaced. There are some, and it's been repackaged in what's called dominion theology. I don't know if you've heard the term dominion theology or kingdom theology or kingdom now or constructionism or theonomy, all the same thing. And it's the idea that we're going to take dominion over the earth, and we're going to establish the kingdom of God. We're going to control institutions.

We're going to control the White House and the Congress and the Senate. We need to be the rulers. We need to bring in the kingdom of Christ through the body politic. And when we do that, we will present the kingdom to Christ as if He needed our help.

That's the idea. There is a third viewpoint, and it's a popular viewpoint. It's called amillennialism, amillennialism. That is, there is no millennium. That is literally. It's like, you can't take this literally.

It's not really going to happen as a thousand years. It's all figurative. It's all spiritual.

In fact, listen to this. They say, the kingdom is now. You're in it.

You're in the millennium now. All of the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah's kingdom are being fulfilled in the church now. Jesus is ruling and reigning spiritually over His church. This is the kingdom. Also, this viewpoint says, oh yeah, all those promises in the Old Testament to Israel about literally having a kingdom and ruling from Mount Zion and et cetera, those are out now.

They only apply spiritually, allegorically to us, the church. There is no throne of David. There is no literal Jerusalem that will be rebuilt. So that viewpoint says, this is as good as it will ever get. Now, can I just say, if this is the kingdom age, I'm terribly, terribly disappointed. If this is the millennium, then we have a case where the book is a whole lot better than the movie. You know what I mean? You read the book and it's like, wow, that's cool.

If this is the movie, it's not a very good rendition of it. And the question I would have is, why did God spend the whole book of Revelation just to tell us what is really not going to happen? Now, by now you've probably figured out that I'm a pretty staunch premillennialist. And I take a literal approach to the Bible.

Why is that? Number one, because of the chronology of Revelation. It's a pretty straightforward book, honestly. The outline is given in the first part of it. It tells you how it's going to unfold. It tells you the structure and the timeline. Then it goes right through a chronology. Chapter 6 through 19 is all the tribulation period, the worst period on earth.

You can read through that and go, man, there's never been anything like that on the earth. That's the worst, just like Jesus said would happen. Then chapter 19, Jesus comes back to the earth with his people to put an end to a huge battle that takes place over in the Middle East. And all of that, chapter 6 through 19, is premillennial. It's before the millennium. Then if you look at chapter 21, we discover that the earth as we know it, the created order is all destroyed.

It's been tainted by sin. The earth is taken away, removed, and God creates a new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem, and that's the eternal state. So sandwiched in between all of Revelation 6 through 19 and chapter 21, the eternal state, happens to be a thousand year reign of Christ on the earth.

If you read plainly and chronologically, it fits, no problem. One reason is because the early church, as I mentioned, believed in the earthly, historical reign of Christ on the earth initiated by his coming. It wasn't until those Alexandrian dudes down in Egypt decided, let's allegorize the whole thing, people like Clement and Origen. And then eventually as church history went on, have you heard the name Augustine? He sort of crystallized this all-millennial viewpoint and sort of sealed that as the dominant theology of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Protestant Reformation. Men like Luther and Calvin, etc., bought into that, unfortunately. But here's the most compelling reason to take it literally.

Ready? Because it happens to be the best way to interpret the Bible. And I'm going to explain. But I love what Vance Havner once said. He said, it's always easier to understand what the Bible actually says than to understand what somebody else thinks it meant to say. Have you ever had somebody go, well, I know it really says that and it's pretty obvious what it is, but it doesn't mean that, it means this.

And you go, how'd you get that? See how are we going to say, well, we don't interpret the Bible prophecy literally, but don't we interpret the rest of the Bible literally? Really? On what basis? What gives you the basis to do that? What right do any of us have to have an approach to interpretation or hermeneutic and then depart from it? That's the important question.

I'll give you an example. Now the angel came to Joseph. And the angel said to Joseph, you're going to call his name Jesus.

And he's going to save his people from their sins. Now is that just figurative? No, a literal baby was born and they named him Jesus. And he went on to save people from their sins.

The same angel came to Mary and said, you will call his name Jesus and he will be great and called the son of the highest. Now is that just figurative? No, that's literal. Listen to the rest. And he will rule over the house of Jacob, that's Israel, forever.

And his kingdom, there will be no end. Is that literal or figurative? It's just as literal. And yet the Amillenist will say, well, the first part's literal and the second part's just allegorical. You can't split your interpretation. So when we go through the Bible, at least my approach has been a grammatical, historical, contextual, literal hermeneutic or interpretation.

And Amillenism will depart from that. Here's another question. When you look in the Old Testament, remember all those promises God offers blessings and cursings to Israel? And he says, okay, tell you what, if you really mess up, I'm kicking you out of the land. Did he mean that literally or figuratively? I think he meant it literally because they got kicked out of the land. And God said, you're going to be there for 70 years in Babylon. Was that just figurative?

No, it happened to be literally 70 years and then they came back. So if all of the judgments to Israel have happened literally, who are we to say, yeah, but all the blessings are only figurative and spiritual and they apply only to the church. You get messed up. If a thousand doesn't mean a thousand, what does it mean?

What does it mean? And if you notice through the book of Revelation how number conscious it is, there's exact numbers given. For instance, there's seven churches and there's seven leaders of seven churches. There's 12 tribes. There's 12 apostles, all literal so far. There's one third of mankind. There's another fourth of mankind.

There are two witnesses, 42 months, 1,260 days. There's 144,000. There's 12,000 furlongs.

What do you do with all those numbers? If 12 doesn't mean 12, then what does 12 mean? And if a thousand doesn't mean a thousand, then what does a thousand mean?

If you just read this at face value, then there's a real kingdom for Israel in Jerusalem from the throne of David by a Messiah who's from the lineage of David and it will last a thousand years just at face value. And that's how the early church took it. Okay, enough said on that. My last point will be much briefer to which some of you are going, thank you, Lord. I talked about the extent of it and the explanation of it. What about the essentiality of it?

What's the big deal? Why do we need it? Something interesting in verse 3, he cast him, that is the devil, into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more. Notice the word he says he should not deceive the nations or better put, in order so that he would not. This is a necessity to get rid of the devil for a thousand years. Until the thousand years were finished but after these things, he must be released for a little while. I know what you're thinking, why?

Once you got him in jail, why on earth would you let him out, right? I'll answer that next week. I want to talk about the need, the necessity for a thousand year reign. Why would God hassle with a thousand years on the earth? You know, why not just go directly to the eternal state? Why the extra step of the earth?

What's all that about? Sort of like the Monopoly game, you know, you get the card that says, go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Why didn't God say go directly to the eternal state? Do not go to the millennium. Why not, what's the hassle of the earth? I'll give you a few reasons.

Number one, to redeem creation from judgment. I think you've noticed there's a curse on this earth. It started back in Genesis chapter 3 with the fall of mankind. The earth has been cursed ever since.

We are experiencing that even today. Beyond that curse of sin, the book of Revelation indicates that there's going to be tremendous, catastrophic, cataclysmic judgment that falls upon the earth during the tribulation period. If you think we've ruined the earth, wait until you see what God does with it. He decimates it. He trashes it during the tribulation period, utterly. So that the millennium will be the answer to the 2,000 year old prayer that his church has been praying. Listen to it in the context of this morning. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That will be fully answered and has never totally been answered yet, but will be fully answered during the millennium.

The earth will be fixed. There's a great story from the early days of the automobile when a man was out in his car, model T4, that's about the only thing on the road, and he had a lot of problems with the early models. So he broke down on the side of the road and he was out there trying to crank it. The cars were hand cranked.

I was going to say, remember that, but I don't think anybody here would. So he tries to crank it. It won't start.

He advances the spark. It won't start. He changes the plugs. It won't start.

He can't get the thing to run. Suddenly, a limousine pulls up. And out of the limousine, a nicely dressed man walks over and says, could I help? The guy thinks, yeah, right. But this nicely dressed, dapper gentleman tinkers with a few things and says, try it now.

Starts up immediately. And then the man proceeds to introduce himself. My name is Henry Ford.

I designed and built this car so I know what to do when something goes wrong. There's only one person who can fix the earth. It's not any politician.

It's not any party. It's only the one who made it. And the one who made it and the one who will judge it is the one who will remake it and will live in it for a thousand years.

By the way, can I just add a PS to that? No matter what you're going through today, no matter what your life, what you're dealing with, God and God alone can reconstruct and heal you. He can fix that which is broken. That's what he does. He's a redeemer.

He's all about that. So to redeem creation from the curse. Second, all of the promises that God made to the nation of Israel have yet to be fulfilled. If you're a reader of the Bible, and I take it most of you have read through the Bible, you know that in the Old Testament there are countless promises that Israel will enjoy a period of unparalleled peace, prosperity with Messiah reigning from Jerusalem and it will go over the whole earth.

That has never happened yet. God promised the Jews a physical and a spiritual kingdom. I think of 2 Samuel 7, the covenant to David.

Psalm 89, he confirmed it with an oath. The millennial kingdom is phase one of fulfilling that promise. This is the earthly reign of Christ from Jerusalem on the earth. By the way, there's probably more scripture written about the kingdom age than almost any other topic in the Bible.

Some even think the main theme of the Bible is the kingdom because of the amount of text that is written about it. So when the millennium is on the earth, when that's done, when that's done, then the created order as we know it, it's over. At that point, God will destroy this earth tainted by sin.

It's completely removed and away with. The Bible says that in a number of places. Then God will create a new heaven and a new earth, new Jerusalem, and that's the eternal state, a whole other phase.

This is getting cooler the more we study about it. Finally and quickly, the millennium is essential because it will reveal man's rebellious nature. During the millennial kingdom, and I'll just say it briefly today and we'll get into it in detail later, rebellion that will still be in the hearts of people will not be allowed to flourish. It will be kept in check. Those who will rule and reign do so, the Bible says, with a rod of iron.

You only need to rule with a rod of iron if there's the possibility of an upset. Justice will be enacted swiftly. Sin will be dealt with immediately. It will be a reign of Christ upon the earth. Now, you and I will be in our resurrected glorified bodies. But people who are in the tribulation period who survive it and are allowed to go in the kingdom age, they're in their normal physical mortal bodies. Now you're going, oh man, that's weird. I can't think. How does that work?

It should not be weird to you. You have read about it in the Bible. Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a resurrected glorified body and ate meals and took walks with disciples in their mortal bodies. There was a perfect commingling of entities.

You've read about it. So we'll be in resurrected glorified bodies. People on the earth, though the longevity of the earth will be extended and people will live a lot longer, there will still be death. There will still be the possibility of rebellion, still be the possibility of sin, though kept in check. And after the millennium's all done, when Satan is released and has his way back on this earth, for a period of time there will be a rebellion.

And it's going to prove something. All of this nonsense of, well, if we just had a perfect environment, we'd be perfect. I am the way I am because of my environment. It's not really my fault. Is everybody else in the world's fault?

No. All of us have a sin nature. And the perfect environment of the millennium that will still eventuate in a rebellion will prove once and for all you can take man out of the slums.

You can't take the slums out of man. And only one person can change the heart of a person and that is Jesus Christ. And some will follow Him during that time and some will rebel against Him even after a period of perfection. So people have longed for utopia. Poets have written about it. Songwriters have sung about it. Politicians have campaigned on that promise.

It will never happen until Jesus comes. And can you hear the rain? Is that rain? Isn't that beautiful? Imagine how good it will be in the millennium. Let me close with this.

C.S. Lewis wrote, perfect background, noise for this, if I find myself having a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If you're wondering why I'm not satisfied, I've had so many relationships with people.

I've tried so many different things and experiences and I'm still not satisfied. You weren't made for this world, friend. God put eternity in your hearts. And a relationship with Jesus Christ, that alone can water your soul like this rain pouring down on earth. Let's pray. Father, we thank you because we remember it was Isaiah the prophet who said, as the rain comes and the snow comes down from heaven and waters the earth and does not return there but gives bread to the eater and seed to the sower, so is my word that comes forth from my mouth.

It will not return void. We pray, Lord, that as your word has watered our hearts and filled in a lot of the blanks, no longer do we have this vague notion of just a spiritual wisp running around the spiritual heavens sitting on clouds forever, but a very real place with different distinct phases to it and purposes for it, a place to explore, a place to see your glory. I pray, Father, that everyone here who has come will be ready for that. I pray that every person here will have accepted Christ as Savior and Lord. In Jesus' name, rule over our hearts now so that we'll be part of the rule over this earth and in eternal state from here on out. In Jesus' name, amen. In order to truly find peace, be it in the world or in our own lives, we must turn to the Prince of Peace.

Left to our own devices, the best we can do is find momentary calm, but certainly not lasting peace. And that's all the time we have for today. But before we go, if you want to share a copy of today's teaching with someone you know or get one for yourself to review again later, you can order a CD copy for just $6 or the complete series From the Edge of Eternity for only $39 plus shipping on both the individual or the complete series. And that's when you call us at 1-800-922-1888, or you can also order online at connectwithskip.com. We'll continue to explore the peace we'll find in heaven and what effect it will ultimately have on the world. So I hope you'll find the time to join us next time here in Connect with Skip, Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Sending you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.